


"Tick-Tock" Goes the Clock

by CatKing_Catkin



Category: Dice Will Roll (Podcast)
Genre: C02E21 - Chronicles & Crusaders, Canon-Typical Violence, Denial, Emotional Hurt, Fights, Gen, Ghosts, Headcanon, Hurt No Comfort, Mental Breakdown, Missing Scene, Pathfinder Game Mechanics, Speculation, Team as Family, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, extinction curse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28239894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: An attempt at covering the missing spaces between Episode 20 and 21.Volio Via, in the library, with the angry ghost.(There are no words to describe how much he despises the word "fate".)
Relationships: Volio Via & Eriato Bati & Royari San Sarnax, Volio Via & Oddbody
Comments: 3
Kudos: 4





	"Tick-Tock" Goes the Clock

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously I had to keep things a little vague here because we don't actually know what's got Volio so stressed out about their god powers at this stage.
> 
> I have my theories, of course - I usually do! But I'm also usually wrong. Whenever I try to theorize about the plot of a podcast, I usually wind up about as far off base as it's possible to be.
> 
> Doesn't mean I can't have fun trying, though.

Volio hadn’t slept all night, but he supposed he must have done a decent job of pretending, because Royari actually made a point to shake his shoulder as if shaking him awake when it was time for his turn on watch.

“All quiet,” she said, barely managing to force the words out around a huge, jaw creaking yawn. 

“I look forward to a very boring night,” Volio lied easily in reply. He made a play of pulling down the blankets on Royari’s bed and fussing with their pillow. His companion spared him an appreciative smile before flopping down dramatically onto the ancient, threadbare mattress. He stayed awake just long enough to pull the blanket up to his chin, and within seconds after that the sound of his snoring was mingling gently with the sound of Eriato’s. 

It was a good sound, a familiar sound, a normal and grounding thing. Normally it was all he needed to be able to pass out dead to the world himself. 

Tonight, much as he appreciated any sort of reminder that his friends were still alive and here with him - _fuck_ Moonstone Temple - the sound did absolutely nothing to inspire any more fond feelings towards the idea of sleep. He wasn’t sure if he had _ever_ felt more awake, in fact. The feeling of wanting to peel his skin off and dig his fingers into the meat of his own beating heart in case that would let him _get it out_ was a very wakeful one, as it turned out. 

He sat on the edge of his bed and stared fixedly towards the room’s single door for a while, spinning the handle of his maul between his palms. Oddbody was curled up on his pillow, leeching the warmth he’d left behind, staring fixedly at Volio. 

He didn’t have quite as good of an internal clock as Eriato did, but he had a halfway decent one all the same. It was good enough to make him piercingly, _agonizingly_ aware of each minute crawling by with what must have been deliberately mocking slowness.

Fifteen minutes in and he’d come to the conclusion that he was in hell. 

It wasn’t as if this was the first time he’d taken a shift on watch. It wasn’t even the first time when it was just the three of them. Normally, he was fine on watch. He was good at keeping himself awake and occupied and amused while also keeping an eye out for trouble. 

But now his thoughts kept turning, turning, turning around one fixed point in space like the world’s most useless compass or a whirlpool into the depths. He couldn’t make himself hum a tune or review potion recipes in his head or tell himself a story or reflect back on some of his favorite murders. It was all out of reach. There was just the door and the dark and the quiet and the looming inevitability of what he feared might be their future.

At some point, he realized he’d started tugging on his hair as if trying to physically drag himself back to his senses. He realized he’d been doing so when a hank of hair came free in his grasp, making him bite back a wince. He uncurled his fingers, belatedly realizing that they were aching with how tightly he’d been clenching them, and stared at the feathery white strands as if they’d personally betrayed him.

Oddbody was still staring fixedly at him.

Volio almost wished to be pulled out of his bed and back into that swamp.

(But only almost.)

“Hear me out, Oddbody,” he finally said, slow and careful. “We have one big boss left to kill in this place. Yes?”

His reply was a rattling hiss, which he decided might as well mean _yes_ for tonight.

“Except all of the big bosses we have killed so far were wrapped up in their own business, like summoning demons or painting the walls. _They’re_ not going to be the ones wandering around late at night, yes? Yes. They will send the little soldiers to wander for them. All right, we might have left a few bodies here and there. But also, a bunch of faceless stalkers hid out in this room with a rotting corpse for literally weeks, and were never found. Right?”

Oddbody let out a low moan at a pitch Volio could feel in his chest. He decided that could also mean _yes_.

“Right. So, realistically speaking, they’re not going to check this room now after all this time. And even if they did, it wouldn’t be one of the big bosses who came in here. So even if they did find us, they would do a terrible job sneaking up on Royari or Eriato, and Royari and Eriato would wake up and kill them, and probably make a lot of noise doing so.”

After all, Royari and Eriato were both faring decently well after a bit of time and medical attention. The aeon stone spinning gently around Royari’s head had left her without even a bruise by the time she’d laid her head down to sleep. Royari, meanwhile, had poured the light of the Eye of Essence into Eriato to at least get her breathing normally again, even if the awful dent in her stomach still remained. They’d both done what they could to patch Volio up in turn, but he’d gone three rounds with a clay golem and could absolutely still feel it. If anyone was fit to be getting into a late night fight, it was his two companions. 

Which didn’t mean that Volio didn’t very much want to get into a fight right now. He had even fewer compunctions than usual about admitting that much to himself. There was nothing in this temple outside this room which didn’t deserve to die, after all.

“So really,” he said. “Me sitting here and staring at the door is the _worst_ thing I could be doing with my time. It is a _waste_ of time. If I were to walk out of this room and go down the hall to the library and spend a little time in there, I would really be doing us all a favor. And I could be back before Eriato knew to miss me. Right?”

Oddbody sang a warbling note. Maybe it could still smell the rotting corpse in the room’s stale air.

“Right,” Volio agreed with a nod. He got to his feet, dusted himself off, laid his maul over one shoulder and then held out his other arm. “Come, Oddbody.”

Oddbody obligingly spiraled up his arm to curl around his neck, nestled into the ruff. With that, Volio made his way quietly out of the room, down the hall, and to the library.

(Lying was a skill, after all, and any skill needed to be practiced. What better way to practice than to lie to himself until he believed it?)

The library was just as they’d left it, with the same books open on the table, though the onionskin book on the miracles of humanity was short a few pages that he’d tucked into his bag to review later. It was easy as anything to think back and remember titles he’d only skimmed before, to go to the shelves and track them down. The one that Ultadar had shown them earlier stood out like a beacon in his peripheral vision. He avoided it for now.

Instead, Volio grabbed five other books that looked promising, sat down on the floor, and started to page through them, one by one.

… _with the blessing of his powers comes gifts of great vitality and vibrancy, as the recipient finds new harmony with the essence of life itself, so that even their sleep is blessed with perfect restfulness…_

Hah! Lies and more lies. He could already tell this one wouldn’t be helpful. The tone of it was all wrong - too much _gushing_ , not enough _useful_ information. Volio tossed it contemptuously aside and picked up another. 

_…_ _Aroden_ _drew deep from the well of life within himself and let it pour forth into the afflicted so that they seemed to glow from within, and their flesh was made whole…_

No. 

_…_ _Iomedae_ _, his greatest servant, who is one of the few mortals of_ _Golarion_ _to complete the Test of the_ _Starstone_ _and gain divinity herself…_

No!

 _…though he lay as one dying, his gift of divinely-touched life burned too brightly within him, and with barely an exertion of will he began to heal himself, slowly and inexorably as the turning of the seasons_. 

N O !

Book after book was tossed aside with increasingly frustrated force as it slowly dawned on him that this entire library just might be _useless_ to _his_ purposes. It was all so _academic_ , and what wasn’t academic was positively _dripping_ with notes of adoration and worship, as if Aroden’s blessings were the most wonderful thing that there could be, as if the idea of being like him was the ultimate goal, as if _turning aside_ was…

It seemed as if he blinked, and five books had become thirteen, all useless, all discarded for the same sins. They lay face-down and broken-spined on the floor, and yet as he surveyed his efforts thus far, Volio felt a shiver race through him. It felt as if they were staring back. As if they were judging him for his efforts. Mocking him for his failure or maybe for his futility, for the presumption of thinking there was _anything_ to be done in the face of a dead god. 

He’d known a fair few hostile audiences in his day, and the silent derision of those _useless_ books was suddenly the worst of all.

He wanted to throw them even harder to make the feeling _stop_ , but instead he made himself go and find the book that Ultadar had shown them. There must have been something he’d missed. 

There wasn’t.

_…is perhaps the case that if the lights of the five towers were assembled within willing and worthy vessels, and brought to the seat of_ _Aroden_ _’s throne in the Quartos Mountains, then cast forth back into the world with the bolstering light of those mortal vessels, then…_

“And then what?” Volio heard himself whisper, as if daring the words to say what he knew by now they would say. He saw his hands as if they belonged to something else. He saw his fingers curl, tight and gnarled, and heard the paper crinkle in protest until it seemed about to tear. “ _And then what?_ ”

_“My goodness, what a mess you’ve made in here!”_

His every muscle seized in alarm and Volio swore violently in shock as the temperature of the room dropped and the sonorous voice of Ultadar echoed through the air. Sure enough, scant seconds later the ghost himself floated down through the ceiling to hover a foot above the floor, staring around in the sort of aloof disappointment that really old humans seemed to cultivate within themselves like a prized flower. 

Yet once the initial rush of shock and his own instinctive dislike of the ghost had time to fade, Volio actually felt a dizzyingly warm rush of relief surge through him. He felt an exhausted, hysterical little giggle in his throat and didn’t bother to hold it back. 

If nothing else, the monotony of failure had really been starting to get to him.

“Ultadar!” he chirped, getting to his feet and working a cramp out of one shoulder. “Wonderful to see you, old man! Just the dead person I wanted to speak to!” 

The ghost’s face contorted into something equal parts suspicious and disdainful. _“Oh? Well, whatever it is you have to say, perhaps we can discuss it while you tidy these books back up!”_

“Yes, yes, of course. Just answer my questions and I will be so grateful that I will tidy this place up spic and span! Neater than it has been in six hundred years!” He would rather have choked on his own blood and died, of course, but Ultadar didn’t need to know that and almost certainly couldn’t see the lie for what it was. 

He still held the book in one hand. Almost unconsciously, he reached out and curled the fingers of the other around the handle of his hammer. In that moment, it was a motion meant more to soothe his own nerves than to threaten violence. After all, there were nights - and tonight was definitely one of those nights - when the weapon was an infinitely more comforting presence in his life than Oddbody was. 

(His familiar was circling the room, watching. Always watching. He hadn’t done anything to break the silence since Volio had started his mad, desperate search, besides letting out the occasional hiss which had been easy to mistake for the rustling of paper.)

Ultadar’s eyebrows were almost to his hairline, now, almost hidden beneath the gleam of the tiara adorning his brow. _“Well, if that’s what it will take, then speak up, young man! I will of course offer any information I can to aid you and your friends in your mission.”_

“Wonderful, wonderful.” As if lured by the promise of relief and answers at last, he swayed a few steps closer to the ghost. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before! Of _course_ you will be more helpful than these old books. Of course you will know. You see, my friend, I am _tired_ of reading about these powers of ours’ and what they do. I know very well what they do. And now, it seems, I know where they might _lead_. But one thing I can’t find - and I have been looking very hard - is how to _make them go away_.”

Ultadar blinked. And, just for a moment, his face flashed skeletal. _“Wh-What?”_

A flash of hot, bitter frustration made Volio bare his teeth. He remembered entirely too late to try and make the expression look like a smile, and knew immediately that he hadn’t succeeded. Well, it was the thought that counted. “It is a very simple question, no?” He stepped closer, a drowning man with his vision fixed on a lifeline. “Surely you know the answer. Surely you can tell me how to take these powers away from me and Royari and Eriato?”

_“Take them away? Cast aside one of these last and greatest gifts from_ _Aroden_ _? I don’t know what you’re playing at, young man, but it is a particularly poor joke even by the standards you’ve shown thus far!”_

It shouldn’t have been possible for a _ghost_ of all things to puff up like an offended blowfish, and yet Ultadar was suddenly so full of righteous indignation that he was managing to do just that.

The sight of the ghost of the stuffy old priest gearing up to lecture him _now_ of all times, about _this_ of all things, made something inside Volio snap. He almost heard it as it did, physically _felt_ something inside of him break. 

He threw the book so hard that it embedded itself in the wall. The sharp, sudden sound made the ghost flinch. Volio burst out laughing at the sight. How could he do anything else? Who’d ever heard of a ghost flinching? That was _so_ ridiculous.

Somewhere behind him and up on top of a bookshelf, Oddbody echoed the sound, and that just made him laugh harder. 

Besides, throwing the book left him with both hands free to heft the maul. This time, it was a threat.

“Not a joke.” He stepped closer, only realizing then that Ultadar had been matching his approach with a slow, gradual, matched retreat, drifting backwards towards a wall. Well. Volio fully intended to have this conversation with him buried in a wall, if that was what it took. “A very simple question, like I said.” Closer. “ _Tell me how to take them out_.” 

_“There_ is _no way to remove them, you fool! And, and I wouldn’t tell you even if there was! This is clearly the fated path that—”_

 _“Liar!”_ Volio howled as the dam burst at last. _“You know something! I know you do!”_ He swung his maul down into the floor hard enough to leave cracks, exulted in the feeling of the vibrations up his arm. “ _Tell me!”_

 _Fate_. He hated that word. He didn’t have enough words to possibly even begin to convey how much he hated that word. But he did have a very large hammer and an increasing will to use it.

Besides, it felt so good to just keep shouting.

 _“We are not going to walk your path! We are not going to be your sacrifices! So tell me how to get_ rid _of these powers right now or—”_

He’d successfully backed Ultadar halfway through the wall and Ultadar apparently decided that was far enough. The temperature in the room suddenly plummeted enough for Volio to start seeing his own breath. The old man’s face went skeletal and stayed that way. Then, with a _shriek_ of existential rage, the spirit surged forth, throwing out his hands and digging spectral fingers _into_ Volio’s chest and Volio felt his heart…going…slow…

With a shuddering gasp, he wrenched himself free and stumbled back. For a moment he was so desperately _cold_ , but only for a moment. Then the chill was chased away by a surging tide of adrenaline and fear and bright, manic, _desperate_ joy.

“Very well then,” he rasped, and got into a fighting stance. “If you are not going to be helpful to me, maybe you can still be _useful_ and let me _beat you back to death!”_

That would still make for a nice break from research, after all. 

His hammer left a trail of green sparks in the air as he swung it around in a vicious arc at Ultadar’s chest. It didn’t connect with the satisfyingly meaty _thud_ that he preferred but it _did_ connect. Volio saw the shade’s essence briefly scatter and distort, and when he pulled the hammer back he saw it dripping in glowing ectoplasm. He allowed himself a half-second to admire the effect before swinging again. This time, Ultadar swept under the arc of impact and came up in his face, digging ghostly claws into his shoulder, staring at him with empty, angry eyesockets. 

The ancient bookshelves had one good thing going for them, and it was that they muffled the sound coming out of the room very nicely indeed. Screams and laughter and howls to a dead god all mingled into an ear-ringing clamor within the library, but Eriato and Royari slept on as Ultadar and Volio tore into each other and Oddbody watched from the top of a bookshelf. 

Thank someone for small mercies.

 _“_ _Aroden_ _is gone!”_ Ultadar was howling. Half his face was gone and wasn’t reforming. _“There is no one left to hear our prayers! Life is meaningless!”_

His chest hurt, his throat hurt, and he was pretty sure the only reason he wasn’t actively bleeding was because his blood had frozen in his veins. But Volio still took one last breath and swung his maul at the intact side of Ultadar’s face. He saw it blur and collapse as well under the half-impact, and it didn’t reform. The spirit’s howling was cut off with one last distorted screech, and then he discorporated into nothing. He left behind nothing but a few smears of ectoplasm, and soon even those started to fade as well.

“Finally, we agree on something,” Volio panted.

Silence was his only reply. 

He was alone in the room, and so he gave into the impulse to hug himself - a useless, childish attempt to chase away the lingering chill of death. Then he startled slightly to feel something long, warm, and furry settle across his shoulders like a cleric’s stole. 

Volio glanced over to meet Oddbody’s placid gaze. Oddbody stared back at him and chirped.

 _You still have work to do_ , Volio decided that meant.

He heaved a sigh. “I know,” he said, and trudged back to the bookshelves. “I know. Miles to go before we sleep, hm?”

He got another stack of books to page through and settled down on the floor to keep reading. 


End file.
